Bush Wants Pet Projects Reviewed

[December 21, 2007]  WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush complained Thursday about thousands of pet projects Congress sent to him in a just-passed spending bill and asked his budget director for ideas for what to do with them.

Without a line-item veto, Bush doesn't have a lot of good options to fight the 9,800 "special interest" earmarks he said were obtained by lawmakers for their states and districts.

Bush said Democratic leaders in Congress ran on a promise to curb earmarks and made some progress doing it.

"But they have not made enough progress," he said. "And so, I'm instructing budget director Jim Nussle to review options for dealing with the wasteful spending in the omnibus bill."

White House budget office spokesman Sean Kevelighan said Nussle will review options on spending but declined to speculate on what steps he would take, if any.

The line-item veto, a power enjoyed by most governors, would allow Bush to kill projects without having to veto an entire bill.

Bush's predecessor, Bill Clinton, briefly got to wield line-item vetoes in 1997, before the line-item veto law passed in 1996 was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.

Clinton's first line-item vetoes so incensed Congress, he dialed back and wielded subsequent ones with a light hand. When the line-item veto law was declared void, his budget office almost seemed relieved.

Bush also could submit a bill to Congress asking lawmakers to rescind spending in the omnibus that he thinks is wasteful. But with opposition Democrats controlling Capitol Hill, such a measure would be dead on arrival.

Earmarks run the gamut, from drug treatment centers, economic development projects and railroad improvements to health clinics and job training programs.

In theory, Bush could simply refuse to carry out congressional earmarks. The great majority of them aren't listed in the spending bills themselves -- which carry the force of law -- but in accompanying reports and tables as an indication of Congress's intent.

That also has perils. Agencies take earmarks seriously. To ignore them is to invite retaliation by lawmakers -- who also will be deciding how much to agency budgets next year.

Another incentive to step carefully is that the White House doesn't want to alienate lawmakers whose votes they might need on other agenda items.

"Ignore at your peril," said Jim Dyer, former staff director for the House Appropriations Committee.

"This administration's only got a year left on the calendar, but they're going to want things. I would think they ought to tread very gingerly before they start ripping out member earmarks," Dyer said.

Former Energy Secretary Bill Richardson, now running for the Democratic presidential nomination, learned the hard way how seriously members of Congress feel about their earmarks. In 2000, Richardson got his head handed to him at a Senate hearing after his department was slow to release earmarked funds -- or refused to do so entirely.

"You've shown a contempt of Congress that borders on extreme arrogance," said Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va. "You will never again receive the support of the Senate of the United States for any office to which you might be appointed."

[Associated Press; By ANDREW TAYLOR]

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